RE: LSIDs and ontology segmentation

> If owl:import can be selectively done. Then, what is the criteria to do
> that?  Then, how the ontology's designer to tell its user its intent.  For
> instance, if this must be aligned to ontology and if that is optional etc.
>
> Although this owl:import closure is perhaps a similar issue as the
> web-closure, it should easily avoided with careful ontology design and
> deployment.
>
> Or have I misunderstood your interpretation?

No I think we are basically on the same page.

> Also, there is an ontology evolution and management issue here.  For
> example, if I develop a 2D gel ontology and temporarily aligned to a general
> ontology, for instance, the BOSS.  But after the HCLS group finished the
> development of a, say HCLS-Experiment ontology, how should I change my
> alignment of the Gel ontology to HCLS-Experiment without breaking existing
> applications that depend on the Gel/BOSS to function?

I'm glad you brought that up.  I do think we have the 
expressiveness in OWL (and in Description Logics, 
generally) to model term alignment (equivalent classes/properties,
  inverse roles, value restrictions, etc..) as a seperate ontology
This would refer to (and therefore owl:import) the HCLS-Experiment 
ontology ( to ground the mapping semantically not just for annotation 
purposes ).

You can then either have the instance graphs that depend on the Gel/BOSS associate
with this term mapping (expressed as an OWL ontology) with 
rdfs:isDefinedBy, or have the Gel ontology import this lingua franca 
ontology directly.  Just some thoughts.  Not a trivial proposition, but we 
have sufficient expressiveness to capture this kind of web ontology 
management pattern (and others like it).

instance Graph / other ontology
  |
  V
BOSS
  |
  V
Concept Mapping Ontology (an o3:Profile)
  |
  V
HCLS-Experiment Ontology

Chimezie Ogbuji
Lead Systems Analyst
Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery
Cleveland Clinic Foundation
9500 Euclid Avenue/ W26
Cleveland, Ohio 44195
Office: (216)444-8593
ogbujic@ccf.org

Received on Friday, 14 July 2006 13:28:17 UTC